Chris Selley on U.S. ballot initiatives: The benefits of wanton democracy

U.S. ballot initiatives: The benefits of wanton democracy

Some rock-ribbed conservatives have spent the past 36 hours theatrically bemoaning the end of America as they knew it. No longer is it the land of rugged individualism, they say, but well on its way to becoming a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term. Henceforth whenever people want things, they will demand those things of the government.

However big or small a grain of truth lies therein, it’s interesting to note that on Tuesday night, voters in several states did rather the opposite of submitting themselves to government. Most notably, Washingtonians and Coloradans voted to legalize marijuana. Not decriminalize it, mind you — that namby-pamby middle step our Liberals couldn’t muster the gonads to take — but legalize it outright. The Yes vote in each state was roughly 55%. (Massachusetts and Arkansas, which went 61% for Mitt Romney, voted to allow medical marijuana as well.)

Needless to say, shifting gears in the War on Drugs is not Barack Obama policy. Just recently his federal goons have been cracking down on reputable medical marijuana growers in California and Colorado. At this point, no one knows how his administration will react to outright legalization, but any belief that he’ll soften in his second term seems to be based mostly on wishful thinking: “Oh, he’s so intelligent. He must realize that prohibition is a catastrophic failure!”

I doubt it, but we’ll see. In any event, on a night when Americans ostensibly surrendered themselves forever to big government, Washington and Colorado struck quite excellent blows for individual rights. Yes, politicians in Olympia and Denver are salivating at the thought of the tax revenue; and in Washington, you won’t even be allowed to grow your own. (Mind you, you can’t distill your own gin either.) But this represents a grand, downright traditional coalition of Americans standing up and saying, “don’t tread on me.”

Both the states in question went blue on Tuesday, but it’s a mistake to think the vote broke down cleanly along party or ideological lines. In Colorado, Public Policy Polling found that 34% of people who described themselves as “somewhat conservative,” and 26% of those who described themselves as “very conservative,” thought marijuana should be legal; and 28% and 22%, respectively, planned to vote Yes on Amendment 64. And that shouldn’t be surprising.

I’m convinced most Canadians have no idea what a libertarian is. If the term can apply to Stephen Harper, as some of our more hilarious pundits insist it can, then it can apply to literally anyone. Here’s a trick: Say you found yourself in, I don’t know, Nebraska, chatting up some big friendly dude in denim overalls and a checked shirt, with a gopher-shooting rifle slung over his shoulder. And let’s say he told you, “I don’t want the goddamn government telling me what to smoke.” Which party would you assume he supported?

Supporting prohibitions is in some ways a natural conservative position. Supporting the status quo on marijuana prohibition, in full knowledge of the facts as they stand — it does not prohibit marijuana, but merely hands a monopoly on cultivation and distribution to warring gangsters — conforms to no ideology whatsoever, save possibly Dadaism.

Canadians like to think of themselves as far more progressive than their Jurassic American cousins, and tend to bristle at the idea of routine exercises in direct democracy. Yet we have the damndest habit of electing the most conservative governments imaginable, in the sense that they nearly always defend the status quo until the courts tell them they have to stop.

We’re being lapped on drug law reform — it’s decriminalized in nearly half the American land mass! Same-sex marriage — given the thumbs up Tuesday night by voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington — is following remarkably closely behind us, and thanks to American voters, not their courts. Massachusetts came within a percentage point of allowing doctor-assisted suicide. Some conservative backwater this is.

It’s hard not to feel a bit jealous. If the people are ahead of the politicians, as Canadians are on a great many things, why should they have to wait? If nothing else, such initiatives would force opposing politicians to make a case against the idea when otherwise they could have hidden under their desks.

And yet all this wanton democracy really does seem like “an American thing.” Maybe Americans, because of their relatively tumultuous history, are simply more open to change than Canadians — Americans are conservative in so many ways, but also more adventurous and less patient. This week, at least, it looks good on them.